


Liar

by hellpenguin



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-03
Updated: 2007-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellpenguin/pseuds/hellpenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney catches himself lying a lot more now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liar

Rodney catches himself lying, sometimes.

Not because he needs to or that the situation calls for it...But because he can.

They're only small little untruths, like, yeah, he's been to Wales before. He's seen fjords.

No one quizzes him on his experiences because he could afford to go anywhere, and why not Wales?

Rodney has been to a whole other galaxy but he's never been to Wales.

He's not really allergic to citrus, either, but he's consistent in his little lies, and he's even started to believe it himself. He wonders, if someone slips him orange in a sauce, will his throat close up like he says it will? Can he convince himself?

His favorite color is not actually blue (orange). He doesn't really hate kids (they're cute in a barbaric way).

Sometimes it's knee-jerk, like breathing, an answer before he realizes what the question even was.

He's fallen into a pattern, a downward spiral and he thinks someone cut his brakes.

He doesn't even know who he really is. He's stopped trying to find out.

He doesn't know when it started, but it was sometime in high school. His parents would ask him how was school, and he'd make up something interesting. Never mentioning the bullying or the looks he'd get. He fit in fine. His teachers liked him. They didn't ask for proof, he let it slide.

He doesn't tell Doctor Heightmeyer any of this. He lies to her, too. Tells her he's all right.

But he's afraid. Afraid of making a mistake, and there's something he's remembering, not quite, about weaving and webs and tangled lies.

He doesn't really want to end up looking himself in the mirror and lying even then.

And then John started giving him strange looks. He'd forget some civilian name but not really and John would stare and stare.

It's like John's counting his words like cards and finding they don't add up.

He talked faster to cover up loopholes and missteps. He'd tumble over his own words and backtrack like backstitching, backpedaling, backwards and forwards again, losing and gaining ground.

He found himself carefully choosing words around John, treading softly and truthfully.

It had been two weeks before he realized he had stopped lying altogether.

In this little oblivion of his epiphany, he notices, suddenly, like a new arrangement of furniture in a room he's visited too often, that John had started lying, too. Little things, baby steps, yes he's eaten, no he didn't go out to the pier. No, he doesn't use gel.

It made Rodney furious. Out of spite John was mocking him, knowing full well all along that his little indiscretions piled up in front of Rodney and blared in his face.

He didn't need this. _This_, on top of saving the world and blowing up enemies and _not dying again_, he didn't need John's bullying. They were friends, and friends didn't lie to genius friends and get away with it.

He exploded, _How can you just sit there and say that? How can you lie like that?_

And John shoots back, as easy as flying, _You do it all the time_.

And finally Rodney trips and flails, his little web of lies catching him like a fishing net, like a hammock in the wind. The world stops, freezes, and he _knows_ that it's all over, he's going to have to drop his old habit, shed his skin and start over and he might not make it, he might just fall and end up with his bones broken and unable to heal and who is he really under all those bandages, what is he so afraid of that he's willing to live a lie to cover up--

John catches him with his hands, his lips, his body, and sets him back on his crumbling feet and tells him the truth, his truth, his _secret_ and suddenly Rodney shuts up, finally, and everything he's ever said unravels like their clothes.

He is naked beneath those tiny lies, born again in John's arms.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but Rodney discovers how much _not knowing_ is true agony.

He finds answers in the planes and primes of John's body, he finds solace in recognizing his reflection.

_I know who you are_. John reminds him, assures him, _You're McKay. That's enough, right_?

Rodney can only nod in the Atlantean light, nod against John's collarbone, John's ribcage. _Yes_, yes, _that's enough_.

And Rodney can feel it in his bones, right beneath his skin, like a bruise or a heartbeat, that it's the _truth_.

And it's enough.


End file.
